80 per cent of mobile time spent in apps

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A new report from analytics firm Flurry claims that 80 per cent of your time on a phone on the internet is spent inside apps.

"Today, the US consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets," the firm states. "Eighty per cent of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent inside apps and 20 per cent (31 minutes) is spent on the mobile web."

The numbers show that while many people do use the internet on their phone, most don't even touch the browser.

The figures are based on pulling data from more than 300,000 applications and measuring usage on more than 1 billion monthly active smart devices.

Within that 80 per cent, gaming is the largest category of all apps, with 32 per cent of time spent idling away killing things, solving puzzles or driving fast.

But it's not all about games. Facebook is second with 18 per cent, something that will no doubt please the social network, considering it is expected to launch its own phone and customised version of Android shortly.

According to Flurry, Facebook's huge numbers aren't just about quick visits either.

"Consumers are spending an average of nearly 30 minutes per day on Facebook," it claims. "Add to that Facebook's massive reach, as well as their roughly billion mobile users per month and you have a sizeable mobile black hole sucking up people's time.

"The 30 minutes a day is a worldwide average which means a large group spends even more time on Facebook (possibly hours) watching and participating in what has become the ultimate reality show in which the actors are you and your friends."

That "black hole" could also suggest the low browser numbers, with the company noting that "a lot of people are consuming web content from inside the Facebook app". It might be skewing the surfing numbers, and the same could be said, presumably, for Google apps - Flurry only breaks out Android native, Opera Mini and Safari as browsers.

Safari is the biggest browser on mobile with 12 per cent of the total share.

Those who like surfing on their phone, shouldn't be too concerned however, with Flurry saying it believes "the web will change and adapt to the reality of smartphones and tablets".

It goes on to say: "Websites will look and behave more like apps. Websites will be optimised for user experience first and search engine optimisation second. This supports the trend of mobile first and web second, which brings both mobile app and user experience design to the mobile web."

After games (32 per cent) and Facebook (18 per cent), the most popular app category is entertainment at 8 per cent. Other social networks command 6 per cent, while news, productivity and "other" command a further 10 per cent.